8. Occupy

Chapter Eight ("Occupy"): The "mainstream" corporate media represented Occupy Wall Street as the ghost of communism risen from the dead. From right-wing commentators like Glenn Beck to liberal establishment news outlets like The New York Times, the Occupy movement has been labeled "communist" because it has raised the issue of class inequality in the US. On the cultural Left Occupy was represented as a "new communism" by invoking the theories of Žižek, Negri, and Badiou. What is meant by "communism" in these discourses is the "nursery tale" (Marx) of overcoming our differences through the power of love to defend our common (national) interests against the greedy few who would personally enrich themselves at others expense. If this is communism then Glenn Beck has nothing to worry about because what he fears is only a ghost—the "spirit" of Jesus, not the theory of Marx. Through a close reading of speeches made at the Occupy encampment at Zuccotti Park in NYC by Žižek and Richard Wolff I argue that unless and until we confront the fact that capitalism has once again brought the world to the point of taking sides for or against the system as a whole, communism will continue to be just a bogey-man or a nursery-tale to frighten and soothe the conscience of the owners rather than what it is—"the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority" (The Manifesto of the Communist Party) to end inequality forever.

Keywords: Occupy Wall Street; Žižek; Wolff; communism; Marxism.